Stephanie Thomas worked in radio for years.
During her time as a DJ in Norfolk, Virginia, she heard countless Billboard Hot-100 hits that included ableist slurs.
From Taylor Swift using the word psycho in her song ‘Me’ released in 2019, to Carrie Underwood using the phrase, “Why do you have to be so blind,” in her 2012 song ‘Good Girl,’ – ableism is everywhere in music. In the early 2000s, The Black Eyed Peas even produced a song, which they initially titled using the r-slur, which was eventually changed to ‘Let’s Get It Started’ but only for the NBA to use for promotional purposes during the 2004 playoffs.
Despite the seemingly never-ending barrage of ableist language in music, Thomas said there had never been much of an uproar for change.
That’s why she was taken aback by the response to the perceived ableist language used in Lizzo’s new single ‘Grrrls’ and Beyonce’s new hit ‘Heated’ from her album Renaissance. The ableist word in both songs released this summer was ‘spazz,’ sometimes used as a derogatory term against those with spastic diplegia, a common form of cerebral palsy.
The backlash against the artists began in June after Lizzo released her single. First, a writer from Sidney, Australia, with cerebral palsy, admonished Lizzo for using the word in a tweet. What followed included think pieces about the situation, news outlet coverage, and an uproar on social media.
Thomas, who identifies as Black and disabled, said the outrage mainly came from the white disabled community, which meant cultural nuance and an intersectional lens was missing from the situation.
“I think that the disability community is a microcosm of society, which means that it’s partially racist,” Thomas said. “A lot of people don’t consider what they’re doing is misogynoir [the dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against Black women].They are putting these thoughts and ideas on Black women in a way that they’re not anyone else in the industry, and they are referring to it as a victory. And I think that’s B.S.”
For Thomas, who now works as a disability fashion stylist in Hollywood and a disability advocate, this situation brought up a pervasive issue that often goes unnoticed and silenced: racism in the disability community.
“After Lizzo released her thoughtful apology, they [people, including people with disabilities on the internet] just started calling her fat b—-. I saw someone wrote, ‘What if I called you a fat n—–,’” Thomas said, referencing the derogatory and racist name for a Black person.
“And that just let me know this had very little to do with the word, and it had more to do with how they felt like they could talk to her [Lizzo] that way. And then they came for Beyoncé.”
Ola Ojewumi, the founder and director of Project ASCEND and a disability advocate, agrees with Thomas’ assessment. She said it was troubling to see the erasure of Black disabled voices, when focusing on an issue about Black artists. But she wasn’t surprised.
Ojewumi, who also identifies as Black and disabled, said she and her Black disabled counterparts have had to endure racism in this disability community. She also said, criticism is much harsher for Black non-disabled celebrities when they stumble with disability and language versus white artists who use the same vernacular.
“White disabled leaders are not willing to share the cookie or pass the microphone when it comes to issues that matter the most to the disabled community,” she said. “I’m tired of racism being covered up in the disabled community, and I’m tired of the white disabled community leading the conversation about what matters in terms of disability justice in America.”
According to American Community Survey data, 14 percent of Black Americans have a disability, compared with 12.6 percent of the population.
The National Disability Institute released a report in 2020 stating that thirty-six percent of disabled Black Americans live in poverty, compared with 26 percent of all disabled Americans. Black Americans with disabilities are 2.5 times as likely as white Americans to be killed by a police officer. Black people with disabilities often also struggle more than their white peers to get a diagnosis, and services.
Keith Jones, a lyricist who won an Emmy award for rapping in the theme song for the documentary Rising Phoenix, has been at the forefront of the civil rights and disability justice movement. Jones, a Black man with cerebral palsy, born in 1969 in St. Louis, Missouri, has experienced almost every disability milestone and failure firsthand.
For generations, Americans with disabilities were tucked away in asylums and institutions. They weren’t allowed to go to school or work in public places. Many were locked away due to cities enacting “ugly laws” or unsightly beggar ordinances. Ugly laws targeted the poor and disabled and prevented them from being in public.
In the sixties and seventies, activists fought for disabled children to be included in schools and to make public spaces more accessible. Eventually, in 1973, Congress passed the Rehabilitation Act, Section 504, mandating equal employment opportunity and prohibiting discrimination against the disabled by any entity that received federal funds. In 1975, President Gerald Ford signed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, which guaranteed a free, appropriate public education to each child with a disability in every state and locality across the country.
Jones was part of the first generation of disabled children to attend school. He said he was also the first Black, disabled child to participate in a public school in his New York State district and to be mainstreamed into classrooms with non-disabled children.
But even during the disability advocacy wins, the issues people with disabilities who are BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) face are often vastly different than their white disabled counterparts because they are doubly marginalized by both ableism and racism. It’s something, he says, white disabled people can’t always see; he mentioned that many white people with disabilities think being disabled prevents them from holding white supremacist beliefs.
“The disability rights movement is exceedingly white,” he said. “The racism in the disability community is an open secret.”
While Jones doesn’t think everyone who criticized Lizzo and Beyonce is racist, he believes their treatment of these two Black women celebrities displays an underlying issue.
Jones said Black disabled people are often silenced by their white counterparts who believe bringing up racial issues within the community will somehow halt disability advocacy efforts.
Ojewumi agrees.
“Often, the white disabled community’s first interaction with Black people is in positions of service, meaning Black immigrant health care workers being CNAs, personal care attendants, and nurses. And there is an unspoken abuse that happens to these Black health care workers and this subservient view by white people with disabilities.
“So it’s easier to criticize Beyoncé or Lizzo, but not Eminem or Olivia Rodrigo.”
Ojewumi brought up other serious issues the disabled community faces, including police brutality; and how Black disabled people are more than twice as likely to die at the hands of police. She wishes the disabled community focused on improving and changing these issues versus language perceived differently depending on the country.
This controversy revealed that the word spazz can be perceived differently depending on where a person lives. In Great Britain and Australia, spaz is seen as more derogatory than it is by many Americans.
Heather Watkins, a disability activist with decades of experience who also identifies as Black and disabled, pointed out that while white disabled people were speaking about negative experiences with the word spaz, some Black disabled people said the word is part of African American vernacular English and is often used differently by Black communities.
Watkins mentioned that if Black disabled people had been asked, they could have provided a better understanding, and nuance to the situation.
“I think they should wait and defer to Black folks and see what we do and listen to our perspectives about it,” she said. “And when we say something is a miss or ableist, wait for us to talk about it, share it, and better inform you. And then you can amplify the story instead of taking the lead and trying to be the central voice when you should be, you know, a supportive ally there.”
All four disability advocates believe Beyonce and Lizzo handled the debacle with class and grace, especially after removing the word from their songs. And even if the word may mean something different to everyone – these advocates support language evolution, and unlearning harmful words.
But they hope this situation does more to raise awareness about what needs to be done to unite the disability community. They hope to spread the message that disability justice must also include racial justice.
“We have bigger problems to go after than two Black females doing something so prevalent in the music industry,” Thomas said. “And as a Black woman with a disability, it just pisses me off, and it shows me that it’s a bullying tactic, not an advocacy tactic. And we didn’t solve the problem. Instead of policing people’s language, we must encourage people to get to know our culture. And no one wants to get to know the culture of bullies. Do I think you should call people out? I think you should call them in.
“So two artists took a word out. Do you think that will encourage other artists not to do it? No – Some artists are not going to know that, that happened. If you want to do a campaign about powerful language, then do a campaign about language that hurts – do something effective.”